I’m good at doing research and making educated guesses based on that research. I’m also very involved in the racing game community and notice patterns between different game releases.
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Well, the easiest “tell” in all of this is whether Stellantis cars show up in other games…
GT7 doesn’t seem to have a problem licensing from Stellantis…
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And neither did Codemasters or Criterion.
Have they introduced anything more recent than 2020 though?
The stuff they’re introducing could very well have been licensed and made before mid-'21
It’s possible, but at the same time, as much I love the Stellantis brands, has anything interesting from any of them even come out after 2020? The only one I can think of is the Alfa Romeo Giulia Zagato, but that’s a one-off, and jury’s usually out on new one-off being included (not always, but generally).
Also, if Polyphony (or Sony), and Codemasters and Critreon (or EA), did manage to get the licensing arranged prior to mid-2021, this, at the very least, shows that Microsoft may not have the best licesning deal strategies compared to their racing game competitors. For example, an elongated contract for multiple games is really only one of two ways I can imagine Tesla appearing in GT7 despite Musk having a strong vendetta against advertising. The other being Sony not seeing Musk and his ventures as much as a threat as Microsoft does.
The 1967 Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GT Veloce (middle pic) came in the May 25th update (this year), so yes recently.
That’s not post-2020.
Actually we have quite a lot of brands from the Stellantis group in the game: Vauxhall, Opel, Peugeot, Maserati, Dodge, Jeep and RAM…
Missing are Citroen, DS and of course the Italian brands everybody talks about: Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Fiat and Abarth.
My guess is that PGG could not reach an agreement with whoever is responsible for the Italian brands before the game was launched. Now, PGG is not willing to pay money for car licences to be included in an already released game. That ship has sailed…
However, why do we have Maserati in the game? And what about Citroen and DS?
The car being post 2020? Or the fact that they added it in May of this year? You can also drive the 2020 Guila GTAm as well.
The car being post-2020, as this malarkey started around 2021
Anything before then has been in the works for a while
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Well, GT7 has them (The Italians), and Forza doesn’t. In the end that is all that matters.
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New development on this actually. A YouTuber, Roflwaffle, made a video on car licensing issues in various contemporary games and found something noteworthy in regards to the Stellantis situation.
Gran Turismo 7, Need for Speed: Unbound, and Forza Horizon 5 all mention FCA in their production credits, but mention nothing about Stellantis. So, it does appear that any video games including Lancia, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Abarth, Citroen, and Talbot negoiated their licensing deals before the merger began. Microsoft/Turn 10/Playground simply weren’t quick enough in getting the rights in time it seems.
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Actually, now that you mention it, manufacturers price gouging the licensing rights was brought up in the same video by RoflWaffle.
This is apparently the reason why Lotus is absent from Gran Turismo Sport and 7. A respresentative of Lotus was interviewed by GTPlanet a few years ago and said that Polyphony Digital were paying Lotus less money for licensing rights than other manufacturers, even other manufacturers as small as Lotus, so Lotus told them to pay up more, and Polyphony declined. And, to Polyphony’s credit, this was probably done to prevent other manufacturers for asking for even more money too.
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Bro I was just about to send that here.
And yeah. It seems like a big mess of corporate politics behind the scenes that we’ll likely never know unless the story ends in someone being arrested or some crazy new product is invented from it and we get car channels documenting the fascinating story about how heavy lift drones were made out of spite in a failed license agreement between Forza and Stelantis.
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Precisely. At this point, all we can do is hope really. I mean, we were all hoping already, but at least the gravity of the situation is everso slightly clearer than before. It’s a pity, really, but for once, I can honestly say there likely was nothing that anybody on Forza’s end could do, and for that, I don’t place any blame on them for this Stellantis mess.
Except that the entirety of FCA is absent and pretty much the entirety of PSA is in the game
Not according to the game credits: They list Lancia, Alfa Romeo, Fiat and Abarth as intellecual property of “FCA Italy”. Maserati, Peugeot and Vauxhall/Opel are listed seperately as their own brands. Also the US brands are listed seperately as “FCA US”. Thus, the licensing rights seem not to be in one hand only. They are split up - at least they were at the time of negotiations between PGG and FCA/Stellantis.
If the Italian brands are coming back as a car pack, we will definitely have to pay for that. I do not think that it would be free as for Mitsubishi or Toyota in FH4.
It all depends on how much car licences cost. I am sure that e.g. Cupra and probably some Chinese companies like Xpeng or MG give those licenses away for free. They see it as free advertisement for their company and current cars. Stellantis would certainly not do that… Especially since nobody is really interested in current Fiats or Lancias. It’s mostly the older models that we want. So Stellantis would ask for a cosiderable amount of money, PGG would not be interested in spending that kind of money on an already released game, and they would charge us…
The reason so many cars were lost between FH4 & FH5 is due to licensing issues. many real world manufactures didn’t see the need for there car to be represented in poor performance hence the loss of licencing for that particular manufacturer and car model.
Sure, the “real world manufactures” knew already during the development of FH5 that the game would have poor performance… Sure. That’s why they allowed some of their cars to be in the game and others to be excluded. Yes, that’s it… You nailed it!
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